The Shanti Sena or "Peace army" was made up of

Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2October 186930January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British ...

non-violent Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosoph ...

followers in India.Thomas Weber: Gandhi's Peace Army: The Shanti Sena and Unarmed Peacekeeping, Syracuse Univ Pr.1996 Other movements have developed, inspired by this one, sometimes also using the name used by Gandhi's group. These may include World Peace Brigade, Nonviolent Peaceforce, Swaraj Peeth, the organisation Peace Brigades International and participants in the Rainbow Gathering, and have served as a basis for the practice of Third Party Non-violent Intervention. "Shanti Sena" is a term first coined by Gandhi when he conceptualized a nonviolent volunteer peacekeeping program dedicated to minimizing communal violence within the Indian populace. The words "Shanti" and "Sena" both come from

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

. "Shanti" means peace and "sena" means army, or a drilled band of men. The word "sena" has been criticized for its connection to militarism, but for Gandhi, it had strong metaphorical and spiritual qualities connected to its use in the Hindu

vedas FIle:Atharva-Veda samhita page 471 illustration.png, upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the ''Atharvaveda''. The Vedas ( or ; ), sometimes collectively called the Veda, are a large body of relig ...

. In the aftermath of the Gandhian era, Shanti Sena has appeared in various incarnations. Two Gandhian followers developed separate groups based on their interpretations of it:

Vinoba Bhave Vinayak Narahar Bhave, also known as Vinoba Bhave (; 11 September 1895 – 15 November 1982), was an Indian advocate of nonviolence and human rights. Often called ''Acharya'' (Teacher in Sanskrit), he is best known for the Bhoodan Movement. He ...

established a Shanti Sena that prioritized Gandhi's spiritual approach towards the program, while

Jayaprakash Narayan Jayaprakash Narayan Srivastava (; 11 October 1902 – 8 October 1979), also known as JP and ''Lok Nayak'' (Hindi for "People's leader"), was an Indian politician, theorist and Indian independence activist, independence activist. He is mai ...

established a program that focused more on the political motivations of the program.Thomas Weber: The Shanti Sena: Philosophy, History and Action, Orient Blackswan, New Delhi 2009 The Shanti Sena program also became institutionalized into India's Gandhigram Rural University, where it was incorporated into the university's constitution. Currently Shanti Sena is also very active in

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

as a part of the organization

Sarvodaya Sarvōdaya ( ''wikt:सर्व, sarv-'' "all", ''wikt:उदय, uday'' "rising") is a Sanskrit term which generally means "universal uplift" or "progress of all". The term was used by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi as the title of ...

References

External links

Article on Shanti Sena
Indian independence movement Peace movement in India Gandhians {{India-hist-stub